This week in the Deep Hurting Project, The Singing Forest. It's an obscure film that would have stayed in obscurity if not for the fact that it's one of a handful of films to recieve a "1" on Metacritic. The only others to reach that point are Bio-Dome, Chaos, Death of a Nation, The Garbage Pail Kids, and United Passions. I've reviewed all but Chaos and Garbage Pail Kids, and the former isn't even on the So Bad It's Horrible List I use to curate films for the Deep Hurting Project. And speaking of which, the film's entry on the list points out that the only proof that the film even existed was a very small number of DVDs sold on Amazon and some MPEG torrents. But then, it ended up being sent to Tubi 20 years after it was originally made.
- Well, we're off to a good start. The movie looks like it was shot on ancient film stock, the sound was probably recorded by a potato. And the first scene is a man puking into a toilet for some reason.
- I can only assume that the columnist guy is shirtless for cheesecake-related reasons, but the film stock makes it hard to see anything.
- That doesn't look like a concentration camp!
- You know, it's a good thing that I keep the subtitles on as a default, because the audio's so shit that I really needed them to get what's happening. And even then, the subtitles are unusally delayed, like they're writing it in real time.
- I swear, this shot of the cliffs was B-roll for an obscure Python sketch.
- So, here's the plot of the movie: the columnist has a daughter. Said daughter has a fiancee, and Daddy decides that said fiancee is the reincarnation of a lover he had in the Holocaust, which is inexplicably taking place in 1933, despite the fact that, at that point in time, the Final Solution hadn't even happened yet, the Nuremberg Laws didn't even get passed for two more years, and Hitler still had to technically share power with Hindenburg. I can make this out despite the fact that the audio of the tide on the shore is overpowering the dialogue.
- Why is the music clearly being performed backwards?
- Oh, look, Sonny Boy is rebuffing Daddy's affections. At least he knows how creepy this is.
- Is this supposed to be a time passing montage? Because the only thing that seems to be different is that the beer bottles keep changing position.
- Is that techno music with some guy's cancer kazoo providing the vocals?
- You know, the fact that Sonny Boy has to ask that Daddy didn't take advantage of him sexually makes this even more off-putting.
- And just so everyone's clear, that's just Sonny Boy's knee sticking up, not his dick.
- "Our Little Secret?" That's literally the sort of shit a pedophile says to they kid they're fucking so they won't tell anyone.
- They're barely even together, and he's already acting like a crazy boyfriend.
- Moving around from place to place=life under the Nazis, apparently.
- You know what might actually help these scenes set in 1933? Actual motion. Or at least getting a different bed so it doesn't look like these beds separated by an ocean and 70 years don't look like they're the same fucking bed.
- And this movie just ends. No real resolution, it just fucking stopped.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.